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On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Joseph P. McDonald manned the switchboard at Fort Shafter in Hawaii when he received the alarming message that radar had detected a large number of planes approaching from the north, heading fast for Oahu.
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Brendan Gibbons / Staff photoMarine officers and drill instructors execute close-order drill during the graduation ceremony. The ceremony takes place every Friday as a new set of recruit platoons graduate.

PARRIS ISLAND, S.C.— In the pre-dawn darkness, a white bus with blacked out windows pulls to a stop.

The doors open. In storms a beefy-armed drill instructor, clad in camouflage, the signature Smokey Bear hat pushed low over his face. In a raspy bark, he orders the passengers into the heavy air outside.

He tells them to line up on a weathered set of yellow footprints painted on the asphalt in rows of four.

“You are now aboard Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina,” he says, “and you have just taken the first step toward becoming a member of the world’s finest fighting force, the United States Marine Corps.”

The footprints reflect the Corps’ pride in its culture and capabilities. Perhaps more than any other branch of the military, the Marines draw upon their history, values and high-stress situations to create a potent esprit de corps.

Through three months of stress, physical challenges and rigid discipline, the Corps breaks its recruits down psychologically to rebuild them, as promised in the Drill Instructor’s Pledge, into “physically fit, basically trained Marines, thoroughly indoctrinated in love of Corps and Country.”

Every year, a total of 17,000 men and 2,500 women travel to this island of Spanish moss-draped live oaks, slash pines and palmettos. Each new recruit costs the Corps $11,000, according to 1st Lt. Jean Durham, the depot’s deputy director of public affairs. Training costs $13,748.

About one out of every 10 male recruits and one of every five female recruits won’t make it through training.

Sixty-three men and women from Northeast Pennsylvania will travel to Parris Island in the 2014 fiscal year, according to Maj. Andrew Schoenmaker, commanding officer of the Harrisburg recruiting station, whose territory includes Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and the surrounding areas.

“The kids that you’re going to get from that part of Pennsylvania are hard-working — they never quit,” Brig. Gen. Lori Reynolds says.

Gen. Reynolds is the depot’s first female commander. From 1997 through 2000, she commanded the Harrisburg recruiting station.

“They’re just kind of blue-collar, want-to-work kids, so we always got a lot of good Marines out of that area,” she says.

As of late April, about a dozen recruits from the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area were training at Parris Island. All but one were on track to graduate, Maj. Schoenmaker says.

One of these recruits is 20-year-old Wilkes-Barre native Nicholas Shelly. As of late April, he had been in for three and a half weeks.

The military was his Plan B, he says. He wanted to play college football and did for one year at Kutztown University. He was on the roster for West Chester University when he “messed up his transcripts.” So he joined the Marines.

“When you do it, you’ve got to do it 100 percent or it’s going to be rough,” he says.

He remembers standing on the yellow footprints and watching several drill instructors surround another recruit, screaming at the young man until he broke down and cried.

Few make it through boot camp without such a breakdown moment. Though it might seem capricious to an outsider, Marine officers say the point of the screaming is to train recruits to think clearly under stress, create a sense of shared experience and encourage them to tap into reservoirs of inner strength.

“They’re going to find what makes you tick,” Staff Sgt. Kyle Scott, a Lancaster-based recruiter, says of the drill instructors “As long as you stay mentally strong and self-disciplined, you’ll be all right.”

Each platoon of 40 recruits has three drill instructors. Under their 24-7 supervision, recruits get away with nothing.

Their first introduction to their drill instructors comes in their squad bay, a room with two rows of neatly made bunks, worn foot lockers and two black stripes painted on the concrete floor, used for lining up.

Recruits sit cross-legged as three drill instructors tromp to the front of the room. The senior drill instructor, who directs training and manages the other two, wears a thin black belt. He does the talking during the introduction.

Behind him, two other drill instructors stand in silence. One is a “j hat” or “heavy hat,” a tough but fair teacher and authority figure.

Then, there’s the “kill hat.” He enforces discipline.

“This guy’s a maniac,” Staff Sgt. Scott says.

“Each and every one of you can become a Marine if you develop discipline and experience,” the senior drill instructor yells. “We will give every effort to train you, even after some of you have given up on yourselves.”

Drill instructors can inspire confidence as easily as they can destroy it. Pvt. Isabella Scaramastro, a 20-year-old from Mountaintop nearing the end of her training in late April, described her mental journey during boot camp.

Ms. Scaramastro spent the first nine years of her life in an orphanage near Moscow, Russia. Her parents adopted her and brought her to Northeast Pennsylvania.

“It’s not something you want to remember,” she says of her life in the orphanage.

She described herself as shy and timid before coming to Parris Island. The change happened on the first day she met her drill instructors.

They made her platoon do a weigh-in. One by one, the recruits stepped on the scale and shouted out their name and weight for the whole room to hear. Ms. Scaramastro’s turn came.

“At that moment, I got volume I never knew I had,” she says. “I kind of became confident then.”

She also recalled a breakdown moment.

During physical training, a workout session that usually lasts an hour, her drill instructor singled her out and made her hold a plank position, supporting her body with her arms. She held it for as long as possible, but “after you get tired, you can only hold your body off the ground for so long.” She cried that day.

Many tears have been shed in Parris Island’s sand pits, which look like volleyball courts with no nets. Drill instructors are not allowed to touch recruits, but they find creative methods of intense training, or “IT.” It often involves endless pushups, leg lifts or running in place.

“Part of the process is fear of the unknown,” Maj. Schoenmaker says.

Not all aspects of boot camp are physically or emotionally painful. In their second week of training, recruits fight with pugil sticks — double-sided staffs that look like giant cotton swabs. Donning a football helmet, gloves, mouth guards and groin protectors, they slam each other with the padded ends until one is knocked to the ground.

By the third week, they run the obstacle course, moving hand-to-hand across monkey bars, vaulting over logs, climbing ropes and swinging over gaps.

The fifth week brings the thrill of leaning back into space, trusting the rope and their hands as they descend a 60-foot rappel tower.

Marksmanship training comes in the sixth and seventh weeks. One of the Corps’ many mantras is “Every Marine is a rifleman.”

After training on a virtual simulator, they eventually take their M16 rifle to the firing range. They stare down the red chevron in the scope and squeeze the trigger, feeling the slight kick of the weapon against their shoulders. Their target, a blue, orange or white foam man, dips and rises with each hit.

Every day holds new challenges, but there are seven requirements to graduate: water survival, physical fitness, rifle qualification, martial arts, academics and their final test, the Crucible.

As with the yellow footprints, it starts at zero-dark-thirty, hours before sunrise. Wearing packs, helmets and carrying their rifles, the recruits march 15 miles over 54 hours. The Crucible includes three stations testing them on the tripartite motto of the Marine Corps: Honor, courage and commitment. These three values have been drilled into recruits’ heads since their first week of training.

“You have to think about commitment because you sign a contract,” Mr. Shelly says. “You have to think about honor because you wear the uniform. And you have to have courage to go through all this.”

Throughout the Crucible, recruits sleep on the ground in huts only four hours a night and split 2½ meals. The lack of sleep and food frays their patience as they work together to complete difficult tasks.

In late April, a group of recruits negotiating the Crucible struggled to push heavy ammo cans over a precariously balanced metal ladder without touching the ground. They muttered directions to each other under their breaths, but stayed calm.

If they make it through, they march to the Emblem Ceremony. A drill instructor places an eagle, globe and anchor pin in their hands. For the first time, they can call themselves Marines.

Pfc. Nikita Chesnokov, 19, a Sayre resident, calls the Crucible the most memorable experience of his life.

“As much as you put into it is as much as you put out,” he says. “I pushed 100 percent of the way.”

Attitudes change during the week after the Crucible, known as Marine Week. Graduation is only a week away, and the recruits can take some time to think about what comes next. After 10 days of leave, infantry will report to Infantry School in Camp Geiger, N.C. Other Military Occupational Specialties, or jobs, will head to their own schools at various bases, where they will get the education they need to do their jobs.

The day before graduation, the island’s population swells as friends and family cross the bridge from Beaufort, S.C., to the recruit depot.

Family Day marked a huge milestone for Pfc. Chesnokov. The same week he became a Marine, he also became a U.S. citizen. At a naturalization ceremony during graduation practice, he stood alongside 15 other Marines who became citizens through an expedited three-month program.

Born in Germany to a Ukrainian mother who remarried an Israeli cardiologist, Pfc. Chesnokov wound up in East Hanover, N.J., then Sayre as his stepfather took different jobs.

His stepfather served in the Israeli Defense Forces and inspired him to join the military. He chose the Marines because he wanted a challenge.

“It’s really been more of a challenge of getting out of my comfort zone and constantly working on bettering myself,” he says of his boot camp experience.

The night before graduation, the new Marines relax a bit and hold a “skit night” — a roast of their drill instructors, says drill instructor Staff Sgt. Cheryle Milton. The drill instructors also glean some valuable knowledge for the next batch, including the places where they hide food.

“They hide food everywhere,” Staff Sgt. Milton says.

On the parade deck the following day, the new Marines march in rows past cheering family members in a formal military parade. A Marine band plays as officers and drill instructors perform an intricate close-order drill.

A roar rises from each graduating platoon as the presiding officer dismisses them: “OOHRAH!”

Graduation is only the beginning. At a dinner with parents on Family Day, Brig. Gen. Reynolds says that even if their sons and daughters must go to war, they won’t be alone.

“They’ll have a Marine on their left and a Marine on their right,” she says. “They won’t always be safe, but they’ll be where they want to be.”

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